How Dry Ice Blasting proved a fast solution compared to chemical removal.
After our success in winning a major dry ice blasting contract at one of the country’s largest car manufacturing plants, September and October have been a little ‘all consuming’ to say the least!
However, things are starting to even out now and some great new projects are on the horizon. Firstly, I would like to talk about raising awareness of dry ice blasting and the potential it can achieve.
Cryogenic blasting has long been on the agenda within the Automotive Industry but its sheer potential has yet to be developed.
A recent example, at the site where our contract is based, pitched dry ice blasting against chemical removal of paint from stainless steel panels. Traditionally the panels are sprayed with a chemical to soften paint overspray, the paint is then removed by hand using soft cloths. The process takes around 1 hour per panel. The result is ok but not brilliant, with evident streaking and smearing left behind.
Impressive Removal
Dry ice blasting removed every trace of paint from 1 panel within 8 minutes! No chemicals, no cloths and no elbow grease! There are over 300 panels that need cleaning on a regular basis, resulting in huge time and cost savings.
Chemical removal has been the chosen application for over 10 years. Dry ice blasting hadn’t even been considered until the awareness of our process became evident, as a result of Optimum having a permanent presence on site.
And there’s more too! This week alone we are trial blasting 2 different tools, skid mounts and cyclic belts.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, awareness is everything. Once people see dry ice blasting first hand, they soon realise just how much it can help in their application, and crucially save them maintenance time too.